Stellaris Venture Partners

Meet our very first speaker for SaaS Talks #35 🚀 Swapnil Jain is the Co-founder and CEO of Observe.AI, a leading provider of AI-driven solutions for contact center operations. Before founding Observe.AI, Swapnil was one of Twitter’s first employees in India, where he played a key role in establishing the company’s offices and leading its first engineering team. Join us for the upcoming edition of #SaaSTalks to hear Swapnil’s insights on pricing AI products and the strategic considerations involved. Register here: https://lu.ma/5kq5hoht Alok Goyal Sayantan Sarkar Naman Jain

We’re thrilled to welcome Punch to the Stellaris portfolio! Punch is empowering first-time traders to make confident, responsible trading decisions with a unique single-screen interface. We’re excited to team up with Amit Dhakad, Hiral Jain, Arshad Fahoum, and Ajit Dandekar, and partner alongside Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, Prime Venture Partners, and InnoVen Capital India. Catch the media coverage here: https://bit.ly/3SF5u4l Mayank Jain Ritesh Banglani

Pumped to co-lead the seed round of Punch alongside friends at SIG and Prime. Thanks Amit and Hiral for agreeing to partner with us. Ritesh Banglani Stellaris Venture Partners

🚀 Today, a growing number of #AI SaaS companies are emerging from India. However, pricing and packaging often become tricky for these companies. Should pricing be user-based, usage-based or outcome-based? Annual upfront or "pay as you go"? Purely product revenue or blended with services? How do you figure out whether you are leaving too much value on the table? For all of these questions and more, join us for this highly relevant edition of #SaaSTalks on pricing AI products, featuring three outstanding entrepreneurs: 🔹Swapnil, Co-founder of Observe.AI 🔹Brijraj, Former CTO of Ola and Co-founder of SPRY 🔹Shubham, Co-founder of Pixis Hosted by Alok Goyal. Register here: https://lu.ma/5kq5hoht Sayantan Sarkar Naman Jain

AI Voice Agent for Indian Farmers India's agriculture is vital but many farmers lack access to essential government support, impacting their productivity and livelihoods. To address this, Samarth P, Manas Bam and their team have developed an AI Voice Agent during the Stellaris VP Hackathon. This solution is designed to bridge the information gap for farmers, ensuring they have easier access to necessary support. Tech Stack: 1. LlamaIndex: For constructing the AI agent. 2. Twilio: Manages phone calls and SMS services. 3. Flask: Serves as backend server. 4. OpenAI GPT-4: Powers our LLM capabilities. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gqwWSHGp Or check out the full repo: https://lnkd.in/gAqCZHrd

📢 Join us in welcoming Ritesh Banglani, Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners, as a distinguished speaker at the Global Unicorn Summit in partnership with ZEE Business and WION (World Is One News) Ritesh is a seasoned investor with a passion for uniquely Indian startups, particularly in fintech, healthcare, automotive, travel/mobility, and real estate. Don't miss his insights during the Fintech panel discussion on "Challenging Behemoths: The Power of Product Diversification for Sustainable Growth" on August 24th at the Taj Yeshwantpur in Bengaluru. He'll share his expertise on identifying and scaling innovative ventures in emerging markets. #GlobalUnicornSummit #VentureCapital #Fintech #EmergingMarkets #StellarisVenturePartners #Investor #GUS24

Congrats Praveen Das, Srikrishna Swaminathan and Aravind Murthy on driving such mind boggling growth in the last 18 months. As they say, character is best assessed when the going is very good or just the opposite. I have had the pleasure to see the three of you through both the phases. When things were relatively slow in 2022, it was remarkable to see the self belief, problem solving orientation and the customer obsession. It has been an even bigger delight to see the detail orientation and the same first principles thinking to continuously unlock drivers of customer stickiness, ACV increase and growth! Have learnt a lot from the three of you through these 2.5 years 🙏 Arpit Maheshwari Stellaris Venture Partners

Building a lasting business is a marathon, not a sprint 🏃♂️ Rajeev Ahuja's advice to founders: ▶ Prioritize long-term value over shortcuts ▶ Focus on product-market-regulatory fit, especially in financial services ▶ Maintain quality & stay consistent to stand out 🚀 Catch the full episode on 'What Banks Want': youtu.be/bDsGZ8nCBA4 #FintechForum

I’m pleased to share that Signzy has been shortlisted by the RBI for the Regulatory Sandbox - Fifth Cohort Test Phase. The RBI's Regulatory Sandbox provides a platform for fintech companies to test their innovative solutions in a controlled environment. Out of 22 applications received , RBI has selected only 5 entities, which includes Signzy, @Epifi, ConnectingDot Consultancy , FINAGG Technologies Private Limited and IBDIC (Indian Banks' Digital Infrastructure Company). Each of the selected entities is bringing something unique to the table: * Signzy aims to develop an unassisted video-KYC solution to enhance customer onboarding, addressing challenges like high operational costs and long waiting times. * Epifi will streamline NRI account openings via video KYC. * Connectingdot is working on a blockchain-based platform for digital asset management. * Finagg is developing a blockchain-based financing solution for MSMEs. * IBDIC is exploring the use of AI and machine learning for credit underwriting. At Signzy, we are excited to be part of this initiative and contribute to the growth of the fintech ecosystem in India. For more details, visit RBI's official site: https://lnkd.in/gXUH5PD7 or read the story in today's Economic Times newspaper. Let's celebrate this achievement and continue to drive innovation in the financial sector! #RBI #RegulatorySandbox #FinTech #Innovation #CustomerOnboarding #VideoKYC

Had a great time at the GSF Founders-Investors Conference! Thanks Rajesh Sawhney for this opportunity & Khadim Batti for your insights! Two key topics of discussion, both relevant for Indian #SaaS entrepreneurs: 1. Domiciling your company 2. Approach to AI Few thoughts: ➡ Domiciling your SaaS company in the US has been the norm. Why? - US customers want that - US investors want that - Future acquirers want that - US IPO is the preferred exit aka Freshworks Most of these assumptions are not 100% true. US customers are OK as long as contracts are being written from a US entity. That entity can be a subsidiary of your Indian parent. I believe this is not a practical challenge. Yes, US investors wanted this, but it has changed substantially. When Whatfix was raising its Series B, I remember that a few US investors "preferred" a US HQ. Today, most US investors are OK with an India entity. Y Combinator also recently has started funding companies HQ'ed in India! For mid-sized acquirers, having IP in the US is still a plus, but for larger acquirers (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Cisco), this is not an issue. Their M&A machines are well oiled to make acquisitions across the world. This is the most significant reason as to why you want your company to be HQ'ed in India now. US IPO is quite hard, the bar is $250-300M at least, and even then, you need to truly stand out in your category. India, however, may offer a scarcity premium for SaaS companies to be listed. We have seen RateGain go public in India. I expect several other IPOs in India. One can go public in India with even $50M ARR, and still be a highly differentiated offering! ➡ On AI, loved Khadim's quote: In the short term, we are all overestimating AI's impact & in the long term, we are all underestimating it! Incremental features like natural language based analytics, autocomplete, summarization are important, but every provider needs to ask themselves if they can reimagine the category with AI. At Whatfix, the team is rethinking what human machine interface should be. Instead of humans adapting to applications, it is applications that will adapt to humans, which means that applications in the future may be "invisible". Humans can instruct in natural language what they want to get done from a place they want to e.g. Slack, and expect the software to autoexecute through agents. ➡ That being said, we are not there today. As Khadim said, we are overestimating what AI can do today. AI has enough hallucinations, and for enterprises, "almost OK" is not "OK". The level of accuracy required is far off. In the short term, we will see higher investments in product development as software providers raise the bar with reimagination of their categories. In the longer term, we expect costs of development to come down as AI makes it easier, faster and cheaper to build! If you're a founder reimagining an existing category or creating a new one, we would love to speak with you! Stellaris Venture Partners